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Welcome to your weekly roundup of book news and literary highlights from 

This week, readers name their favorite bookstores around the world, and the paper bags from Chipotle end up in Yale's library archives.

Bookstores were hit hard in the recession, but they've bounced back with a plucky resolve. Small corner shops and city block-sized bookstores are still serving millions of readers, even with the growing draw of Amazon and e-readers.

Last week, The Guardian asked readers to recommend the 

, and the results will make book lovers drool. From a book barge that roams a London canal to an old theater-turned-shop in Buenos Aires, the spaces are each one of a kind.

Wild Rumpus, in Minneapolis, made the list at No. 7. Specializing in children's books, Wild Rumpus is part bookshop, part menagerie. Three cats and two chickens roam the aisles — and when you're ready to check out, a tarantula named Thomas Jefferson is waiting at the counter. There's also a chinchilla, a ferret and two rats who live under the floorboards in a glass cage.

Independent bookstores in Minnesota

Last year, burritos went literary when Chipotle started printing prose on its paper bags and cups. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of "Everything Is Illuminated," pioneered the program with the fast food chain.

 came to Foer when he got bored while eating a burrito and realized he had no reading material.

Now, readers can enjoy the work of Foer, Augusten Burroughs, Julia Alvarez, Barbara Kingsolver, Aziz Ansari and more while they chow down on beans (pinto or black?). It's estimated that up to 

 people a day could be reading the bags and cups.

And now, thanks to Yale University, the works won't just be lost in the trash. Chipotle donated the "first editions" to the 

, which collects American literature in all formats and media — although a paper cup is probably a new one.

Ernest Hemingway made his home just outside Havana from 1939 to 1960 at the Finca Vigia estate. It was there that he wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Old Man and the Sea."

The home is now one of Cuba's most popular tourist attractions, but American preservationists are worried that the writer's papers are at risk. After Hemingway's suicide in 1961, the Cuban government took control of the home, allowing Hemingway's wife Mary to remove only a few items. Most of the home's contents, including Hemingway's extensive library, were left behind.

 that Hemingway's papers and books are "slowly disintegrating in the baking heat and dripping humidity of the sprawling home."

Now, with renewed relations between the two countries, the foundation will be able to send $900,000 in supplies to build a preservation lab. 

, it will the U.S.'s first major export of construction materials to Cuba under the recently relaxed trade embargo.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Tracy Mumford

Author

Minneapolis' own Wild Rumpus, which has cats and chickens roaming amongst the kids' books, landed on the list.

Book briefs: The best bookstores in the world

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